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Obama’s data advantage

For example, they have found $3 to be a magic number: Asking supporters for that paltry donation to win a chance to attend a fundraiser with the president and George Clooney or Sarah Jessica Parker, has generated tens of thousands of responses — people from whom the campaign can collect highly valuable data and then go back to.

“They are way ahead of Romney micro-targeting and it’s a level of precision we haven’t seen before,” says Darrell M. West, a leading scholar on technology innovation at the Brookings Institution. “[The Obama campaign has] been able to work on it under the radar during the Republican primary season.”

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Obama already this year has outspent Romney significantly (and outspent his own 2008 levels) for online advertising, according to several market analyses the numbers. The hope for the Obama team, says West, “is that his online reach will outweigh any Superpac funding advantage Romney might have for television advertising, by reaching deep into communities with targeted online advertising, grass-roots organizing and fundraising.”

The other hope, of course, is that Obama can replicate some of the online excitement that propelled him into office four years ago.

Romney campaign officials acknowledge that they have had neither the time, nor the resources to build a complex digital operation as they were fighting their way through the prolonged primary season. “It wasn’t something we were going to put resources into if he wasn’t the nominee,” said one adviser.

It is also apparent that the Romney campaign will stick closely to the traditional campaign model of heavy and expensive television spending — with the assist of wealthy conservative super PACs that have signaled a willingness to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to defeat Obama.

While the campaign is beginning to increase staff in preparation for the general election, Romney digital director Zac Moffatt says they will do things differently than the Obama operation. For one, Moffatt says the Romney campaign will outsource much of their data management — instead of handling it in house, creating “customized solutions” to fit their needs.

“As a campaign we would not presume to know more than the collective intelligence and resources of the marketplace,” said Moffatt, who adds that they will target audience through “our partnership with an industry-leading data management platform.”

“In the end, what is most important is not how many people on any list or how many followers we have — but their engagement level. And our followers are engaged,” Moffitt said.

Harvard’s Mele, who at age 25 helped pioneer the use of social media technology on Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign, said that even with some obvious attrition to Obama’s 2008 database, Romney is trailing.

Readers' Comments (1542)

From the article: On the sixth floor of a sleek office building here, more than 150 techies are quietly peeling back the layers of your life. They know what you read and where you shop, what kind of work you do and who you count as friends. They also know who your mother voted for in the last election.

Surely a good "BIG brother" job awaits Obama and crew in Romania, Belarus, or North Korea? One thing's for sure, they are terribly MISCAST in their current job.

The real unemployment rate is 10.9%. We are laboring under the threat of a debt that's nothing less than catastrophic, and it caused Bill Clinton to admit to team Mittster that "you have 6 months left to save this country." Say what you will about Bill Clinton (I have) but he NO dummy!

America, when will you realize the and scope of the horrific mistake you made with Obama?

All dictators are super paranoid and keep data caches on their serf population. Barry oblamer is no different.

But the digital data is being turned against obama. The internet is exposing him and his treachery.

The American public will not be gullible and as stupid as they were in 2008. The democrats and the dishonest socialist party member Barry obama have been unmasked. There is much more dismal truth about this muslim Kenyan that is yet to be released as the Demcrat party fractures and the rats desert the sinking oblama ship.

obama's drug damaged brain is failing him now. Panic and fright have set in as he sees his artificial subversive world crumbling around him.

obama really has turned out to be a subversive dishonest unethical conniver. Nothing but a real common street organizer and ACORN employee.

I've got to say it is very amazing that neither Rip Romney nor NObama know anything about how to get our economy back on track. Rip thinks that the economy will come back on it's own with another tax cut to the wealthy and less red tape. Nobama believes in Free Trade Agreements and that will lead to more trade for US products.

Both of these clowns don't understand the real Problem.... FREE TRADE and FAVORED NATION STATUS have been avenues to move our manufacturing jobs to countries with labor costs about $2 per hour or even less. How the heck can American's compete on these levels? China produces sweat camps where people live on the factory campuses and work for $2 per hour.

Until either one of these candidates realize Free trade has been the demise of American economies, both do not deserve to be our President!!!!

As a voter, I'm tired of worn out lines. I'm looking for ACTION. This especially includes CONGRESS.

That also works in reverse. Every bit, byte, tweet,unencrypted e-mail,off the mike when the mike is open-OOPS! thing that obama has done since way before his election is saved forever and is now being masterfully used to vet him as he should have been in 2008.His history of association with radicals and Communists are out there for all the world to see,something which as proven by the recent revelation of his "new party" membership,cannot be hidden.A narcissist such as Obama cannot stay out of the"ether" and his own words are now being used to expose him for the radical Communist, fraud, and snake oil salesman he really is.

Obama and his socialist cabal can raise all the money they can get their hands on. They can mine all the data they can find. They can manipulate the numbers to concoct any government statistic they can think of in an attempt to deceive the public about the true state of affairs. Their sycophants in the press can concoct all the brazen lies they can think of in an attempt to hide the truth.

But in the end, people are losing their jobs. They are losing their savings. Jobs are fleeing overseas to escape confiscatory taxes and the business-killing regulations. Our homes are going underwater. The insane spending spree this person has embarked on in an attempt to turn this country into a socialist paradise is pushing the country ever nearer to total economic collapse. This parsing of the public into groups based on race, age, sex, sexual orientation, union membership and income levels and turning them against each other is tearing the country apart.

Everybody sees it. Everybody knows it. There is no way to hide it.

Regardless of what people think personally about Obama, his experiment in socialism has been a total, unmitigated failure and must end before it is allowed to do any more damage to this country.

Now even the Democrats know it. I know they would love to replace him in the November election, but if they do, they lose the black vote and the loose coalition of aggrieved groups known as the Democratic party will come to an end.

I don't see how the Democratic party can avoid another shellacking even worse than the one they got in 2010. If they are to have a future, they will have to take their party back from the radical, extreme left-wing socialist cabal that has hijacked it and turn back to the principles that made this the greatest country the world has ever seen. Those principles will NOT be found in the writings of Karl Marx and Saul Allinsky.

Clint H. opines: Rip {Romney} thinks that the economy will come back on it's own with another tax cut to the wealthy and less red tape. Nobama believes in Free Trade Agreements and that will lead to more trade for US products.

If that were the case, I'd actually have a scintilla of common ground with the ghetto organizing fool. Obie doesn't believe in free trade, unless there's something in it for him. He's just like you; he believes that he can substitutute his own "enlightened", tyrannical vision for the free market CHOICES of the consumer.

Clint, the problem is UNIONS and their non-competitive practices. They provide OVER-priced labor, and a semi-welfare state within a business or corporation, making American products more expensive, and less competitive.

Obama and his socialist cabal can raise all the money they can get their hands on. They can mine all the data they can find. They can manipulate the numbers to concoct any government statistic they can think of in an attempt to deceive the public about the true state of affairs. Their sycophants in the press can concoct all the brazen lies they can think of in an attempt to hide the truth.

But in the end, people are losing their jobs. They are losing their savings. Jobs are fleeing overseas to escape confiscatory taxes and the business-killing regulations. Our homes are going underwater. The insane spending spree this person has embarked on in an attempt to turn this country into a socialist paradise is pushing the country ever nearer to total economic collapse. This parsing of the public into groups based on race, age, sex, sexual orientation, union membership and income levels and turning them against each other is tearing the country apart.

This article says Obama has a data advantage but fails to prove that he does. Facebook and Twitter account supporters are not advantages for Obama, even today. I know people follow him on Twitter just for the bull that comes from the Obama accounts. The Obamas probably had the greatest number of Facebook likes in the first year of BO's presidency, but I would imagine he has few likes now, after so much disappointment has set in.

DGMSaints writes: This parsing of the public into groups based on race, age, sex, sexual orientation, union membership and income levels and turning them against each other is tearing the country apart.

That's straight from the Saul Alinsky, "community organizing" playbook. Once you understand where Obama comes from ideologically, everything he does makes perfect sense.

http://www.discoverthen...

Born to Russian-Jewish parents in Chicago in 1909, Saul Alinsky was a Communist/Marxist fellow-traveler who helped establish the tactics of infiltration -- coupled with a measure of confrontation -- that have been central to revolutionary political movements in the United States in recent decades. He never joined the Communist Party but instead, as David Horowitz puts it, became an avatar of the post-modern left.

Though Alinsky is rightfully understood to have been a leftist, his legacy is more methodological than ideological. He identified a set of very specific rules that ordinary citizens could follow, and tactics that ordinary citizens could employ, as a means of gaining public power. His motto was, “The most effective means are whatever will achieve the desired results.”

Alinsky studied criminology as a graduate student at the University of Chicago, during which time he became friendly with Al Capone and his mobsters. Ryan Lizza, senior editor of The New Republic, offers a glimpse into Alinsky’s personality: “Charming and self-absorbed, Alinsky would entertain friends with stories -- some true, many embellished -- from his mob days for decades afterward. He was profane, outspoken, and narcissistic, always the center of attention despite his tweedy, academic look and thick, horn-rimmed glasses.”

The Obama team maybe be better equipped to manipulate digital resources but they can no longer manipulate the American people who are clearly onto their antics and whose rising tide of anger against Obama's policies will sink his reelection chances.

All dictators are super paranoid and keep data caches on their serf population. Barry oblamer is no different.

Ooooh.., ominous, indeed... I'm sure the reason he has big ears.., is that he can listen in and spy on everybody... He may even use Homeland Security to do so.... You need to have your security blankie held close to you.., truly...

But the digital data is being turned against obama. The internet is exposing him and his treachery.

Treachery.., perfect word! But you stating this does not imply that you, yourself, are "super paranoid".., as the supposed big eared dictator...

The American public will not be gullible and as stupid as they were in 2008. The democrats and the dishonest socialist party member Barry obama have been unmasked. There is much more dismal truth about this muslim Kenyan that is yet to be released as the Demcrat party fractures and the rats desert the sinking oblama ship.

Wow..., you really should put that last paragraph to music... Too bad someone like Vincent Price is no longer around to narrarate this "tid bit" of prose...

obama's drug damaged brain is failing him now. Panic and fright have set in as he sees his artificial subversive world crumbling around him.

Truly.., you need someone that can state these "truths" of yours in audible terms... I would suggest Morgan Freeman.., but he maybe just as drug damaged as the big eared one... Maybe Sam Ellitot...

obama really has turned out to be a subversive dishonest unethical conniver. Nothing but a real common street organizer and ACORN employee.